- Division of Ecological Restoration
DER has been working with MassDEP over the past several years to pilot water conservation strategies to reduce summer lawn watering in communities across the state. The campaigns use proven strategies to change outdoor watering behavior by providing customers targeted education and feedback to motivate changes in outdoor water use. Significant water savings have been achieved for communities implementing the campaign. On average, households that received the program used 39 gallons per day less in the summer than those that did not receive the program, with participating households using up to 128 gallons per day less in one of the pilot communities.
In October, we partnered with MassDEP to release the Healthy Lawn, Happy Summer toolkit to help water suppliers implement the campaign. The toolkit was designed with input from participating pilot towns and was developed to be user friendly and implementable by communities and water utilities with no or minimal external assistance. To learn more, please visit the project website and join us for an informational webinar on January 8, 2020 at 10am (details available on website). Technical assistance to implement a campaign may be available from MassDEP.
We hope that many communities will take advantage of this opportunity to implement this innovative and effective water conservation campaign and help their residents save water!
